After reading a couple of the patch pages for Monkey Islands 1 & 2 off LucasArts' Hints Section, I am led to believe that somehow PC Gamer (U.S. edition possibly) once gave away both games for only the price of the magazine (or free if you exclude the magazine in that aspect ;))?

Were they special versions in anyway (i.e. any PC Gamer-exclusive logos/graphics, copy-protection readily unlocked, special magazine pages on the games etc.)? I'm pretty intrigued about this particular episode where all you had to do to obtain both games was to buy their respective issues! :D

ThunderPeel2001

04-18-2004, 11:23 PM

I believe it was the UK edition (maybe others too) and only MI1. Basically it was the "old" 256 color version and not the "new" CD music version.

MrManager

04-19-2004, 12:12 AM

It was in the US version as part of the 'most legendary games EVAR' feature, back in 2000. Incidentally, my CD was broken, but I just bought it for the EMI interview anyway.

brougham

04-19-2004, 01:22 AM

I have this edition of PC Gamer and the Monkey Island Disk that came with it. There are no extra logos in the game or anything. It has an extra autorun menu to load MI or MI2, that's all that's really extra with it.

Xippion

04-19-2004, 04:25 AM

Copy protection was removed in the form of a different monkey.exe loader file. Kind of like how the Kixx release of MI2 had the copy protection removed (as far as I know they used a 2-byte patch to monkey2.001). I believe this because I own the release, and though it does not work it did prompt you for copy protection. Incidentally the Kixx release of MI1 did include copy protection, but was so cheap it was released on 3 disks (I believe), which basically means all the files were compressed, so you couldn't play it off the disks.

Drigo Zoxx

04-19-2004, 09:42 AM

Originally posted by Xippion
Kind of like how the Kixx release of MI2 had the copy protection removed (as far as I know they used a 2-byte patch to monkey2.001).

If I recall well, the 'crack' consists of setting to zero the size of a whole SCRIPT block in monkey2.001. The problem is that such script, not only holds the copyprotection screen, but also the skill level choice screen. That way, by setting the SCRIPT size to zero, the script won't get called and the result is that this release of the game lacks of the Easy(less puzzles) playing mode.

That kind of Script level crack has been heritaged from Monkey 1, but since there's no skill level choice there, it worked quite well.

Xippion

04-19-2004, 11:23 AM

Incorrect. As I stated the Kixx release would prompt you for the copy protection code, it just would pass on any values. It is actually possible to do this by editing the loader file too. This is what the 2 byte patch in Monkey2.001 did. The CD-ROM version of monkey island 2 does not contain this patch, instead it has a different loader (Monkey2.exe) file set to start the game in a different "room" essentially skipping the prompt for copy protection and level selection.

Now the bug-fix page at lucas arts doesn't say that using an updated exe will add copy protection to the Kixx release, so therefore it must be the Monkey2.001 patch.

Joshi

04-19-2004, 12:12 PM

Originally posted by Drigo Zoxx
If I recall well, the 'crack' consists of setting to zero the size of a whole SCRIPT block in monkey2.001. The problem is that such script, not only holds the copyprotection screen, but also the skill level choice screen. That way, by setting the SCRIPT size to zero, the script won't get called and the result is that this release of the game lacks of the Easy(less puzzles) playing mode.

This is all true, but nicely enough, if you do want to play the easy version, you just have to run it through ScummVM. For some reason this actually does call up the copyproteciont screen and skill level screen. the copyprotection screen allows you to put in whatever values you want and it'll work and then you can choose what skill level you want.

I actually own the KIXX version of MI1 with the copy protection (and wheel) and Xippion has just answered a question for me whichc is great (all about compression on the 3 disks, but just incase, if I were to install the game to my HD and then move all the files to a portable USB drive and upload them to my laptop (with no floppy drive) would the game still work?)

Xippion

04-19-2004, 01:29 PM

yes, of course it will. may I suggest though that if your laptop is faster than say a P-166 you download the patched monkey.exe from lucasarts.com?